Election Commission
Supply of VVPATs & EVMs is on track and not a matter of concern, Says ECI
The Election Commission of India would like to allay any unfounded apprehensions regarding the supply of VVPATs for the Lok Sabha Election in 2019. The Commission is committed to 100% deployment of VVPATs at all polling stations in future General, as well as bye elections to the Lok Sabha and State Legislative Assemblies.
In order to meet the requirement of 100% VVPATs for all polling stations for the upcoming Lok Sabha Election in 2019, the Commission placed an order of 17.45 lakh VVPATs to Bharat Electronics Limited , Bangalore and Electronics Corporation of India Limited , Hyderabad. Till date, 9.45 lakh units have been produced by the PSUs. Both PSUs have assured the Commission that the remaining VVPAT units  will be manufactured and supplied to the various States/UTs comfortably before end of Nov 2018.
The Commission has been consistently and periodically reviewing the status of production and supply of VVPATs with the CMDs of PSUs, as well as the Technical Expert Committee , to ensure that the design, production and supply activities of all the units of EVMs and VVPATs is streamlined and completed in a time-bound manner after incorporating the features suggested by the TEC which is carrying out a rigorous supervision of the production process and product performance. The officers of the Commission are monitoring the manufacturing and supply of machines on a daily basis in order to ensure timely delivery and pre poll preparedness.
The Commission has indeed enhanced the requirement of additional VVPATs from 125% to 135% considering the trend of failure rate of VVPATs in past elections. The Commission has estimated 171% Ballot Units, 125% Control Units and 135% VVPATs requirements for upcoming Lok Sabha Elections. It may be noted that in case of any error in VVPAT, only VVPAT is replaced with the reserve one, whereas, in case of any error in Ballot Unit or Control Unit of the EVM, entire set of Ballot Unit, Control Unit and VVPAT is changed, resulting in an increase in requirement of VVPATs than the requirement of Control Units of EVMs.
It is pertinent to mention that learning from experience of Kairana and Bhandara-Gondiya bye-polls held in May, 2018 where the errors were mainly caused by excessive exposure to illumination in the polling stations, the Commission has adopted the hardware improvement recommended by the Technical Expert Committee to prevent auto shutdown of VVPATs due to excessive light.
It is also pertinent to note that comprehensive and systematic preparatory activities for the Lok Sabha Elections, including the detailed First Level Checking of EVMs and VVPATs have already commenced across various States/UTs and will be completed in an efficient, effective and timely manner. First Level Checks workshops and trainings of polling officials are being regularly conducted by the Commission to minimize EVM/VVPAT failures due to human errors.
It may be appreciated that over the last twenty years, the Election Commission of India has successfully conducted 113 State Legislative Assembly Elections and 03 Lok Sabha Elections using EVMs. Since, June 2017, Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail  machines have also been used successfully along with EVMs in General as well as Bye elections in all State Assembly and Parliamentary constituencies for enhanced voter verifiability. The Commission is fully geared to use VVPATs in all forthcoming elections.
The Election Commission of India is mandated under Article 324 to 329 of the Constitution of India to provide superintendence, direction and control for conduct of elections in accordance with the law in force.